Who We Are

The Early Rice Project Team:

Dr. Dorian Fuller, Professor of Archaeobotany, the Principle Investigator, has worked on the archaeobotany of India, China and elsewhere for several years.

Dr. Andrew Bevan, Senior Lecturer in Spatial Analysis in archaeology, is Co-Investigator and will coordinate the development of improved geographical modelling of ancient rice agriculture and methane emissions.

Dr. Alison Weisskopf, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, is leading our work on phytoliths both from modern analogue rice samples and Chinese archaeological sites.

Cristina Castillo, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, is leading our work on archaeobotany in Thailand and Vietnam, including field sampling and analysis of plant macro-remains.

Other affiliated or recent team members

Eleanor Kingwell-Banham, NERC-funded PhD student, working on early rice cultivation in Sri Lanka and Orissa, is writing up her PhD.

Patrick Austin, worked as a research assistant, sorting archaeobotanical samples from China, India, and Sri Lanka.

Melissa Tan, worked as a research assistant, processing Phytolith samples from Vietnam, India and China. She completed her MSc in Environmental Archaeology at UCL.

Harriet Martin, worked as out outreach officer (2010-11), and run a pilot program of outreach to London schools. She also designed this website.

Project Partners

We are working closely with a number of collaborators from abroad.

China

Dr. Ling Qin, Associate Professor, School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing. She coordinates archaeological sampling in China with her students works on macro-remains from Chinese Neolithic sites.

Xiaoyan Yang. Associate
researcher, Inst. of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences
(Beijing), runs the leading laboratory on archaeological starch grain
research in China and has active sampling programs for archaeological
starch and phytoliths

In addition we have worked with

Prof. Ling-hua Tang, Jiangsu Academy of Agriculture Science, Nanjing,

Dr. Guiyin Jin, Dept. of Archaeology, Shandong University, Jinan

Thailand

Rasmi Shoocongdej
is Professor of Archaeology at Silapakorn University, Bangkok, and has active field research
programs on Neolithic and pre-Neolithic sites in northern Thailand.
She provides expertise of archeological
context of Thai evidence.

Rabi Mohanty
is Professor of archaeology at Deccan College Pune, and has active
field research in eastern India (Orissa). He can facilitate expanded
geographical sampling for archaeobotanical remains, and provides
expertise of archaeological context of Indian evidence

Professor Emeritus Mukund Kajale, from Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, also continues to work with us on determining the ecology of taxonimic diversity of rice weed assemblages

Australia

Peter Bellwood.
Professor of Archaeology at Australia National University, is a
global leader in thearchaeology of Southeast
Asia, and the dispersal of agricultural populations in the region and
on cultural phylogenies of Southeast Asian archaeology

USA

Barry Rolett. Associate
Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, has
expertise on the Archaeology
and Zooarchaeology of Southeast China, and has been collaborating in
recent years with Fujian provincial Institute of Archaeology of
Neolithic excavations and study of palaeoenvironmental and sea-level
change sequences

Prof. Professor William Ruddiman, University of Virginia, has partnered with the Early Rice project in previous initial efforts to modeo methane emissions.

Colombia

Jacob van Etten
is senior research associate at Bioversity International (Cali,
Colombia), leading a CGIAR international research program on
Agricultural Biodiversity for Climate Change adaptation. He is at the
forefront of geospatial modelling of crop dispersal histories;
he carried out spatial analysis of our rice database for the
preliminary estimates of methane emissions from ancient rice
agriculture published in 2011